


The creation of home

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: All shall be well, James finally deals with the difficult stuff, M/M, Psychotherapy, Which means he can finally enjoy the good stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12895044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: Finally, eight weeks after he’d turned up at her consulting room, adrift and from all appearancesnot waving but drowning, Detective Sergeant Hathaway calls while she’s eating a cheese sandwich and reading Wolf Hall during her lunch break. He asks if she’s still willing to treat him. He sounds like crap.





	1. Late February: First meeting

**Author's Note:**

> There are 13 chapters to this fic - all written - and I'll be posting 2 or 3 a week in the run-up to Christmas
> 
> A word of caution: This is a detailed story about James in psychotherapy, a story in which James had some emotionally neglectful, perhaps emotionally abusive, childhood experiences. As such, we get up close to the emotional costs he's paying as an adult for those childhood experiences, and we get up close to his experience of the therapeutic process - sometimes we're with the therapist, sometimes with James, her client. Readers for whom this rings bells personally may find the story emotionally evocative or painful in places. 
> 
> The title comes from this quote from Alice Miller, psychotherapist and writer:  
> “Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fantasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home.”  
> ― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful Divingforstones who has helped me so much with the development of this fic. In fact, the original idea for it came from both of us and was developed and shaped through conversations we had about our mutual wish to see James in therapy. It turned out to be me who wrote the fic in the end, but it wouldn't exist without Divingforstones' ideas and insights.

The doorbell finally goes at twelve-thirty, just as she’s giving up on them ever turning up and is popping out to get a sandwich and a breath of air. She has to see them of course, which means that she probably won’t get any lunch before her one o'clock client arrives. _Bugger._ Sergeant Hathaway? Haberway?—she hadn’t quite caught his name—had phoned just as she’d been letting herself into her consulting room at nine this morning, saying that they needed to ask her a few questions about Anthony Macaulay, a therapist who’s recently joined the psychotherapy reading group she runs. Routine enquiries, he’d said. Nothing for her to worry about. She’s finding it difficult to imagine the worry-free circumstances under which police detectives might want to see her “as soon as possible, and definitely today.” 

In any case, she’d gone on the local news website as soon as she’d powered up her computer, and discovered that a body—male, Caucasian, early forties, had been hauled out of the canal just north of Walton Well Road, yesterday evening. It was a vague description, but it did fit Anthony Macaulay, and she knew he’d lived in or near Jericho. It had knocked the wind out of her. He’d only been to the most recent monthly group meeting, she barely knew him, and frankly she’d thought he was a bit of an arse. A few months ago a young client had introduced her to the word ‘mansplain.’ It turned out that Anthony Macaulay was the living embodiment. By the end of the meeting she’d been wishing he’d shut up, but God, she hadn’t wished the poor bloke dead; murdered. No one deserved that. And he wasn’t that bad really; just full of himself—a very common trait in male psychotherapists, in her experience. Anyway, given that she’d seen him just the night before his death, and presumably his diary or computer or whatever he used would have made that clear, no wonder the police want to see her.

She’s found her two client sessions this morning hard going. She feels deeply unsettled, and her imagination keeps offering her images of Anthony’s face, pale and swollen, just visible below the surface of some murky water. It’s taken considerable effort to ground herself, to keep bringing herself back to her clients. So she’s relieved when she shows the second one out at eleven-thirty, settling at her desk to write her notes, taking comfort in the familiar routine. She’d told the surprisingly posh-sounding sergeant that she’d be free from eleven forty onwards, and finds herself getting quite agitated while she waits. 

By twenty past twelve she’s had enough waiting, so, notes finished and a few emails answered, she does ten minutes’ mindfulness practice. She settles herself in her chair in the familiar upright posture, hands, palm-down, on her thighs. Just having this comfortable place to rest her hands feels inordinately reassuring to her today. She’s always been big, and against all odds, given the terrible, impossible pressures on girls to be thin at any cost, she’s always liked her size. She’s always felt grounded in her body, sure she can depend on it to help her feel steady and robust—a godsend in her line of work. Her appreciation of her size stems, she’s sure, from having had a mother who was fat by societal standards, and who was beautiful and happy with her body; and who was clearly adored by Rose’s father. In her intimate relationships, Rose has never been with anyone—man or woman—who didn’t love her big, strong body, and that probably also has it’s roots in having witnessed, from her earliest days, the love and appreciation between her parents. 

She says a little prayer of gratitude to which ever gods or goddesses are in charge of allocating parents, and in her mind’s eye she says hello to her mum and dad, who are both long dead. Then she comes back to her heart beating and the slow movement of air in and out of her body as she breathes. At the end of the practice she locks the filing cabinet and grabs her handbag. She’s almost at the door when the bell rings, and she swears quietly but with feeling.

When she opens the door there are two men standing on the landing at the top of the flight of stairs that lead up to her room. Both are in grey suits, each holding an ID card. Everything about his body language says that the older, dark-haired one is in charge, so it’s interesting that it’s the other one, the attractive if rather gangly blond, who speaks.

“Dr Rosamund Harrison?”

“Rose, yes.”

“DS Hathaway. This is DI Lewis.” She sees his eyes settle on the handbag slung over her shoulder.

“You look like you were just about to do a runner, Doctor.”

The voice is even posher than it sounded over the phone, and not especially friendly. Quite snotty, actually. Designed to provoke a reaction presumably. She has to suppress a smile. Bless him. He’ll have to do better than that. She hasn’t worked for thirty years as a psychotherapist without becoming pretty bombproof around people who are trying to push her buttons.

“I thought you weren’t coming, so I was going to get lunch. I have another client at one, as I think you’re aware, Sergeant.” She steps back and gestures into the room. “Come in, gentlemen.”

Snotty sergeant doesn’t reply, but waits for his boss—the stern-looking Lewis—to enter first. She sits back down on her desk chair and Lewis settles in one of the old, comfortable armchairs she uses when she’s seeing clients. He begins to ask her about Anthony: how he’d been at the reading group; her impressions of him, and he confirms that yes, it was Anthony’s body that was found in the canal. Lewis actually comes across as being a lot kinder than his initial, rather severe expression, suggested, and she can imagine enjoying talking to him, under rather different circumstances. But right now, not only are they talking about the murder of someone she knew, which is unpleasant enough, but while Lewis chats quite amiably with her, his bloody sergeant is wandering round the room, touching things. _Her_ things. Lifting the corners of papers on her desk to see what’s underneath. Picking up one of the deep green glass vases from the window ledge and holding it up to the light. It’s bad mannered and feels invasive, and all of a sudden she’s very irritated. _Oh, he’s good._ He’s obviously had a lot of practice winding people up.

She watches as he pulls a book off the shelf—a mindfulness self-help book. He reads the blurb on the back cover—and then snorts. She gives up trying to concentrate on the conversation with Lewis. “Found something amusing, Sergeant Hathaway?” It’s only years of experience that keeps at least some of the annoyance out of her voice. 

But when he turns towards her, he’s all smirk anyway—he knows he’s got under her skin. _Bollocks._

“Not really. It doesn’t really instil confidence though, does it, Doctor?” He starts quoting from the back of the book: “Mindfulness helps promote a genuine joie de vivre; the kind of happiness that gets into your bones . . .” If she’d just been caught flogging snake oil, he couldn’t have looked more disparagingly at her. 

“Happiness in your bones?! Really? How exactly is that measured, Dr Harrison?”

She’s so pissed off that she almost misses it. Almost. But just for a moment she does see it, that fleeting glance he makes towards his boss. A glance that seems to signal a need for approval. She gets an image of a cat tormenting a mouse, swatting at it with its sharp claws, and laying the mouse, still twitching, at the feet of it’s human companion. She’s clearly the mouse in this little scenario. Interesting dynamic between the two of them then. Interesting too that Lewis hasn’t told Hathaway to sit down or behave himself, when she would put good money on the inspector valuing respect and manners. She wonders what on earth it is about her, a pretty humble psychotherapist, that makes the sergeant want to swat at her by way of a gift for his boss. Interesting indeed.

She lets herself have a good look at Hathaway, and of course now she can see it—it’s so bloody obvious—how young he really is, regardless of whatever his actual age is—mid-thirties, maybe? Before her eyes he’s transformed into the gawky, unhappy boy he once was—and apparently still is, underneath all that intellectual belligerence. A moment on and the sad, lost boy has gone and snotty sergeant is back once again. But she saw him and her heart softens; touched by how much work he’s having to put in to keep himself safely tucked out of view. It must be exhausting; and lonely.

“Sergeant Hathaway?” She doesn’t have to make an effort to keep her voice warm and friendly now; her irritation has completely dissipated. She points to the other armchair. 

“If I agree with you that psychotherapy can be an imperfect art, and that mindfulness certainly attracts more than its fair share of flowery descriptions, will you take the weight off your feet for a couple of minutes?”

He stares at her rather suspiciously—obviously not expecting this response at all—but then glancing once again at Lewis ( _parental figure? security blanket?_ ), he folds himself into the chair and adopts a posture that her mind instantly labels as a pseudo-slouch. 

She turns her attention back to Lewis, to give Hathaway a bit of space to settle himself, only to find that Lewis is watching her intently, clearly trying to weigh her up. She meets his gaze and although he says nothing and does nothing obvious, she gets a strong sense of his gratitude, obviously in response to her kindness to his sergeant. He doesn’t exactly smile at her, but there’s something, just a slight softening in the creases around his eyes, that conveys warmth. 

It’s the work of a moment, and she’s sure that Hathaway himself didn’t see it, but she’s left convinced that that there is a depth and complexity of feeling between these two detectives, more than she would have ever imagined would be the case. Mind you, her imaginings about police detectives are mostly based on ancient episodes of The Sweeney, so what does she know?

Lewis asks her to provide an alibi for the time of Macaulay’s death, but looks apologetic for having to ask. Luckily she’d been at her friend Trish’s house last night and had stayed over so she could have a couple of drinks, so no problem there. All the while, Hathaway sits in silence, his face an effortful blank. 

Ten minutes later, they’re gone, armed with Trish’s number to check out her alibi. There’s only a few minutes left before her next client is due, and she pulls his notes from the filing cabinet, intending to review their last session. But her mind keeps wandering back to Anthony, forever gone, to Lewis, with his kind, care-worn smile, and to Hathaway, his compelling, troubled sergeant.


	2. Early March: Second Meeting

Rose is startled when the consulting room doorbell rings. Her last client of the day had left twenty minutes ago, and if she’d got on with writing her notes instead of trawling through the John Lewis website, looking at beautiful bed linen she doesn’t need, she’d have been gone too.

Other than clients, almost no one visits her at the consulting room, so it’s with a slight flutter of trepidation she opens the door. She’s momentarily thrown by the sight of DS Hathaway leaning against the door frame. There’s no sign of Lewis, which is a shame—he was by far the easiest to deal with of the pair. She knows they solved the case the day after they’d interviewed her—it was all over the local news—so she’s got no idea what he’s doing here. She steps aside to let him in and he enters without speaking. He walks over to the window and stands with his back to her, looking out at the horse chestnut tree that rises up from the pavement just in front of the building’s tiny front garden. She’s just about to ask him what on earth he’s doing here when he turns round.

“We charged Anthony Macaulay’s brother with his murder.” He looks sorrowful. 

“Yes, I heard. It’s terribly sad. His poor family.”

Hathaway nods. He’s dressed in a pale grey suit and a lemon coloured tie—it seems a rather light, sunny combination for this sombre man. He goes over to the bookcases that fill one wall of the room and trails his hand along the spines of the books on one of the shelves. He pulls out a book—a collection of essays on attachment, as it happens, and reads the back cover. He slots it back into its space on the shelf. He pulls another volume out, a rather technical review of the latest empirical evidence on the changes in brain function that can arise through psychotherapy. He flicks through it, frowning slightly as he reads. Eventually, he seems to remember she’s there. He taps the book. “It’s an odd idea, that just talking can alter biology.”

“I suppose it is. From my point of view, it brings hope. Trauma knocks about our brain functioning, even brain structure, but therapy can be transformative biologically, as well as psychologically.”

“Transformative.” He seems taken by her word choice.

She can’t resist a little dig. “You might be interested to see there’s a chapter on all the good stuff mindfulness practice does to brains.”

He has the good grace to look a little sheepish, but says nothing. He replaces the book and reaches up, his lanky frame making it easy to reach the top shelf. He takes down another book—a battered old copy of a Kübler-Ross exploration of grief. Suddenly she feels tired and hungry. 

“What are you looking for, Sergeant Hathaway?”

He looks startled at the question. “Nothing.” He frowns. “I just like books.”

“You just like books.” She gazes steadily at him. “You drove out to Summertown in the rush-hour traffic to look at books. Yes, well, admittedly it is difficult to get your hands on books in central Oxford.”

He puts his hands in his trouser pockets; rocks back on his heels a couple of times. “I don’t know why I came. I don’t believe in therapy.”

“Can I ask why not?”

“Forgive me if this seems rude, but it’s indulgent. Messy.”

“And yet here you are.”

He pauses. “Yes.” He sounds hoarse, like something is making it hard to get the words out. He clears his throat. “Like I said, I have no idea why I came.”

“That’s OK. You don’t need to know. Actually, being honest with yourself about your not knowing can be a really good place to start therapy.” 

His eyes widen and he stares, horrified, at her, as if she’s just tried to recruit him into some sort of cult. “I assure you, I’m not here to sign up for therapy sessions.”

She can see the panic bubbling up under his disdainful facade. She watches him trying to swallow it back down, his Adam’s apple bobbing. She smiles reassuringly at him. “You’re sure about that?”

He looks back at her, and his face contorts as he tries to get his emotions under control. He turns away and rubs his hands roughly over his face. When he turns back to her there are points of pink on his cheeks and his eyes are watery. He looks too young and shaky, like it wouldn’t take much to make him completely crumble. He rubs his face again, as if he’s trying to erase the evidence of his emotions. “ _Shit_.”

She nods, sympathetically. “So I can see.” That gets her a raised eyebrow and a flash of amusement, despite his evident turmoil. Good. “Look, you clearly have something emotional going on. And some part of you chose to come out here to see me. And I would be very happy to book an initial session with you, a one-off, to explore whether we both think therapy might be helpful for you. But this isn’t that session; I’m not currently your therapist, I don’t have a contract with you, I don’t have permission to rummage around in your emotions and private business, so I’m not going to do that. And you need to make a conscious choice, when you’re a little calmer, about whether you want to take that step.”

As she talks to him like this, kind but intentionally business-like, she can see him settle, his distress subsiding as the competent, controlled Sergeant Hathaway re-emerges and takes over again. She starts tidying up the papers on her desk to give him a bit more space, unscrutinised. As she finishes, he walks over to the door. 

“I’m sorry about all this. It wasn’t my intention to—” He gestures towards the books, to the ghost of his young self still standing there, struggling to keep his head above water.

“There’s nothing for you to apologise for. Honestly.”

“I really don’t know what I want to do.”

“I know. It’s OK, Sergeant. You can call me if you get a little clearer—or if you stay unclear and want to talk about that. I’d be happy to hear from you, regardless.”

He gives her a smile of acknowledgement and it’s a break-your-heart little thing that doesn’t reach his eyes and somehow manages to make him look even more sorrowful. He reaches for the door handle but then turns back to her. “Inspector Lewis would think I’m a fool if he knew I were here.”

“Oh?” She’s surprised. 

“He’s very anti therapy and counselling—all that kind of thing. He once referred to them as _the dark arts._ ”

She feels a twinge of disappointment. She’d had Lewis down as an intelligent man; rather enlightened for a middle-aged policeman. Maybe she’d got him wrong—they had only spoken for a few minutes, but she goes with a hunch. “I got the impression he’s unlikely to think of you as a fool, regardless of the circumstances.”

He meets her gaze, his expression unreadable. “Perhaps.”

And with that, he goes, quietly closing the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Epilogue:

She waits for him to phone. She acknowledges to herself that it’s unlikely; that he was ambivalent about therapy at best. But she wills him to choose what he needs, all the same. It’s interesting, who gets under her skin and who doesn’t; who she gets invested in beyond her usual care for her clients. She acknowledges the pull to look after troubled young men that still tugs at her, even after all these years. She revisits, once again, the loss of her brother, suddenly gone at twenty-seven. Once again she swears gently at the stupid bloody sod for going too fast on a borrowed motorbike and losing control: dead, but still showing up thirty years later in the beautiful, haunted men who seek her help. She dutifully takes it all to supervision yet again, as she has repeatedly over the intervening decades. 

But the days pass, turn into weeks, and she hears nothing. Eventually, she accepts that for whatever reason, it’s not going to happen. She wonders if Lewis got to him, persuaded him not to come, but she can’t quite imagine it. Little though she knows him, she somehow trusts that Lewis has his sergeant’s best interests at heart.

 

* * *

 

On a warm May morning she misses a call to her mobile while she’s seeing a courageous young woman with a long history of depression. Her phone’s on silent and when she checks it later there’s no message; no caller ID. The same happens again three days later. Finally, eight weeks after he’d turned up at her consulting room, adrift and from all appearances _not waving but drowning_ , Detective Sergeant Hathaway calls while she’s eating a chicken sandwich and reading Wolf Hall during her lunch break. He asks if she’s still willing to treat him. He sounds like crap.


	3. Late May – between sessions 3 and 4: James and Lewis

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last half hour. I was starting to worry.” Lewis looks more pissed off than worried, to be honest, but it seems like he hasn’t clocked that James has actually been AWOL for almost two hours. Thank Heavens for small mercies.

“Sorry, sir. I just had to attend to something.”

Lewis clearly misunderstands and looks expectantly at James.

“Not to do with the case. Something personal.” 

Lewis frowns. “That’s not the first time you’ve disappeared recently.” He takes a step closer to James and scowls. “And you reek of cigarettes.” 

Why does he have to notice everything? Why does he always want to know everything? Other DI’s wouldn’t give a shit as long as the work got done. James had chain-smoked on the drive back from Summertown, trying to erase or at least subdue the lingering effects of the therapy session. They’re three sessions in and it’s torture. It’s shocking how unbearable sitting in a pleasant room in North Oxford with a pleasant companion can be. Shocking how quickly he has become utterly paralysed; caught, painfully, between the need to change something, to do something different, and at the same time, how terrifying and impossible the prospect of change is. In the sessions, he shifts back and forth between the worst kind of condescending, intellectual time-wasting, and dumb, animal fear. It really is torture. 

In the stop-start traffic back into town it had felt like he was having a kind of premonition of grief; the muscles behind his eyes aching with uncried tears. He’d driven one-handed, dangling the cigarettes out of the open window, picturing Lewis’ scowl of disapproval as he’d let each butt drop onto the road.

Lewis is still staring at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

James can feel his cheeks burning but he manages to hold Lewis’ gaze. “Nothing, sir. Just a bit of personal business.” Lewis looks at him and looks at him, and it feels like he’s trying to read James’ mind.

“Is it a woman?”

_Christ!_ “No!”

“No need to sound so indignant. I’ve known coppers do far worse during working hours.” Lewis’ face colours. “And by woman, I mean all the options along those lines.”

_Oh, Jesus._ “The answer is still no.” 

Still Lewis stares at him, and James feels like his skin has turned transparent and Lewis can see right into him. “It’s a bloody full-time job, Sergeant; get your act together. I need you at work with me, not gallivanting off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lewis still isn’t quite done with him. “And while we’re on the subject of you getting your act together, don’t think I didn’t notice you smelt of alcohol on Monday morning, and you looked like crap. You look like you’d slept in your suit.”

Well, he’s not wrong. James has nothing to say. He hangs his head, waiting for the bollocking to continue. But when Lewis starts again, his voice has softened. He finally does sound worried, and that is _so_ much worse.

“You’d tell me if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you?”

James can feel the emotion rising up through his chest and pouring into his face. He turns away a little. “Of course, sir. Everything’s fine. Just had a bit of a full-on weekend out and about, that’s all.”

Lewis doesn’t look convinced. Well, he’s not stupid, is he? Maybe he’s having a hard time picturing James living it up, _out and about_ on a weekend. James waves the file at Lewis that he’d picked up on his way back into the nick. “Preliminary forensics. We’re definitely looking for a World War Two service revolver, but get this, they’re pretty certain it’s a French army issue one.” He watches as Lewis reluctantly drags his attention from his sergeant to the case. Lewis sighs and holds out his hand for the file. 

“Go on then, let me have a look.”


	4. Early June: Session 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter where we’re with James in a therapy session, so I just wanted to say a couple of things about that:
> 
> Firstly, I wanted to reiterate the word of caution: this is a story in which James had some emotionally neglectful, perhaps emotionally abusive, childhood experiences. In this chapter, we get up close to the emotional costs he's paying as an adult for those childhood experiences, and we get up close to his experience of the therapeutic process. We’re in his skin and it’s a painful place to be right now.
> 
> Secondly, James Is in weekly therapy, an hour at a time, possibly for months, and I can’t do justice to every moment of that without writing a multi-novel epic! So look on these chapters as dipping in and out of his therapy sessions, experiencing key moments in the process.

He’d almost cancelled. Their current case—attempted murder of an off-duty nurse by an unseen assailant—is going nowhere, and Lewis will be fucking furious if he realises that James has taken off again. And the therapy sessions are awful. Rose, predictably, keeps inviting him to talk about himself, his family, his past—the shittiest hat-trick imaginable. He, also completely fucking predictably, does everything he can not to do that. Last week, he’d tried to turn the session into an academic attack on early psychoanalytic thinking, having given himself a crash course in Freud and his acolytes. But even that had been better than the week before, when he’d spent most of the session in tense silence, trying to lose himself in the watery light pooling around the collection of glassware on the window ledge, his longing to be anywhere but in this room, a real, physical thing lodged painfully in his chest. But despite his best efforts, he can feel something approaching, a dark storm of despair—a rising tide of panic and loss and self-disgust. He is bitterly regretting his decision to come.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Rose clears her throat. “How are you, James?”

He responds automatically. “I’m fine, thank you.” 

She nods, smiles slightly. “And if you maybe give it a moment’s consideration?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “I’m tired. We have a rather difficult case. You know I can’t tell you about the case.”

“I know.” She thinks. “You could tell me about you and the case—how you’re feeling as you work on the case.”

He closes his eyes and pulls in a breath. He finds her questions about his feelings difficult to answer. Even if he’d wanted to, he really doesn’t know how to locate his emotions and offer them to her all neatly labelled and ready for dissection.

“Take your attention into your body, James; into your chest and your guts, into your face. That’s where you’ll find your emotions; not in your mind.” It’s like she’s fucking psychic, sometimes.

He dutifully does as he’s told. He’s surprised to find that his eyelids feel like they’re made of lead, like it’d be a real struggle to open them. In fact, his whole face and head are too heavy, as if they’re bearing some enormous, invisible weight. One of his hands goes up to his chin, as if to support it, and suddenly a fog of something stale and suffocating materialises, something old and sorrowful. His throat tightens and his eyes start to water and it gets hard to breathe, to get the air down through the narrowing passage of his throat. He starts to feel panicky and opens his eyes. Rose is still there, watching him, her expression kind and unruffled. He’d actually forgotten her for a moment. 

“Just focus on the outbreath, James—the in-breath will take care of itself.”

He pushes a breath out through his open mouth and it turns into a yawn and air comes in.

“Good. Just keep doing that. You’re fine. You probably don’t feel it, but you’re fine.”

He concentrates on breathing. 

“You’re designed to feel emotions, James—even the difficult ones.”

He feels enormously sad, bereft; an empty house that never became a home. He rubs at his eyes. “I don’t even know why I feel like this.” 

She frowns slightly as she looks at him, but says nothing.

He shrugs. “OK, I mean, yes—family, childhood, priesthood, relationships, work.” He tries to laugh at the length of the list but it turns into a sob. “Sense of belonging—lack there-of. Love—lack there-of. _Fear_ there-of.” _Jesus._ He sighs. “But, you shouldn’t need to mourn for things you never had.”

Now she really frowns. “Who on earth told you that?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you know the word hiraeth, James? I think it’s Welsh.”

“I don’t.” Even in the midst of his own little psychodrama, it amuses him that he can still find time to have a go at himself for not knowing a word. It’s galling how little he knows of any of the Celtic languages. He adds it to his carefully curated list of failings.

“It means feeling homesick for a home that never was.” 

_Well, fuck._

Another sob, a weird kind of pause in which he can’t breathe, and then another, strangulated sob. Even he can see that it would probably be better at this point just to let go; to let it out. But he doesn’t know how, so he does what he knows—he swallows it back down. His throat aches with the effort and his head’s pounding. He pulls out his handkerchief and blows his nose. After some struggle, finally, he feels more or less back in control of himself. “Sorry about that.”

“You have nothing to apologise for, James. You felt some emotion and showed a bit of it. That’s OK.”

Easy for her to say. They sit quietly again for a while. The case and Lewis tug at his attention. It takes Rose talking to pull him back.

“If I’ve understood, you feel a lot, you have a lot of emotions, but you don’t always know what to do with them—how to manage them. Is that right?”

He thinks back over the many nights when he’s consulted a whisky bottle about grief and loneliness. And all the days and nights at university and the seminary and the police where he’s worked himself ragged; where he’s tried to use work as an anaesthetic. Times when Lewis has had to literally order him to go home. Better times, when Lewis has ordered him to come home with him; when a shared takeaway and something on the telly, when Lewis, really, has kept it all at bay for an evening. Christ, it’s bleak when he actually lets himself think about it. No wonder he drinks; no wonder he smokes until he feels sick. “I suppose so. Rather pathetic in a grown man.”

He’s noticed she never tries to argue with him when he has a go at himself—she probably knows there’s not much point. She just steers them onto an adjacent path. 

“What were your parents like with their emotions when you were a child? How did they deal with their emotions?”

What to say? “Their upper lips were stiff.”

“Both of them? No outbursts? Arguments?”

More detail required—oh good. “Dad was very self-contained. Most of the time you wouldn’t know he had feelings at all. But he did actually have a temper. There would be . . . eruptions.”

“What was that like for you?”

“Terrifying.” He’s shocked to hear the word come out of his mouth. “I mean, he wasn’t violent or anything like that. It’s just, the only times he ever really felt like he was completely there, present, was when he was angry. The rest of the time, most of the time, he was so distant he might as well not have been there.”

“I can see why that would be terrifying.”

He’s both warmed and embarrassed by her validation of his young self’s fearfulness. 

She carries on. “I’m curious, how did your dad react when he lost his temper?”

She often asks him questions he’s never thought about. “I think he disapproved of having lost control. I imagine he might have been disappointed in himself—so he usually blamed someone else.”

“Did he blame you, James?”

“Yes, amongst others. Often he blamed people working for him on the estate.”

She nods. “And your mum? What about your mum and emotions?”

Good question. “I don’t remember her ever losing her temper. And she did care about Nell and I; she was just—” He gets an image, an old memory of his mother, elegant and composed, sitting in front of her dressing table, dabbing scent on her neck, her face a beautiful mask in the mirror. “She was sort of cool. I don’t mean cool as in, you know, _cool_ ; I mean cool as in chilly. She wasn’t quite icy, but her emotional thermostat was definitely turned down fairly low. I think she found emotions unpleasantly messy. She was an elegant, cool blonde. Hitchcock would have loved her.” A shocking thought suddenly occurs to him for the first time—maybe her composure hadn’t been completely natural; maybe she’d taken tranquillisers or something similar and that’s how she appeared so detached, so _untroubled_ by her life at Crevecoeur. It’s not a thought he wants to explore further.

Rose nods. “So it’s fair to say no one taught you how to deal with your emotions when you were a child?”

“Well no, but what do you mean, taught? It’s not like parents actually sit down with their kids and show them how to cope with fear or shame or fury, is it?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what they do; well, some parents, anyway. And others don’t explicitly have those conversations, but they model how to manage emotions. Their children learn how to soothe and calm themselves, to talk to themselves reassuringly, through their parents doing those things for them; by seeing their parents successfully cope with their own anxiety and anger and sadness.”

He doesn’t know what to say.

“And you didn’t have any of that?”

The sadness and the feeling of being crushed under the weight of all that he’s never had re-emerge. “No.”

She nods and is quiet for a while, perhaps waiting for him to elaborate. Eventually, she opens up another line of questions. “How did your mum and dad react when you showed emotions? When you struggled with your emotions like all children do at times. When you were clearly scared or frustrated?”

He looks away, presses his lips tightly together before he answers. “Mum would tell me not to make a fuss. Dad would tell me not to be childish.” 

“It sounds like you tried very hard to do as they said.”

He sighs, deeply. “They didn’t purposely try to make me feel bad. They weren’t asking me—or Nell—to do anything they weren’t already doing themselves.”

“I understand, James. Maybe it was more like neither of them really knew what to do with emotions—theirs or yours. Maybe they found strong emotions disturbing, frightening, even, so without consciously deciding to, they strongly encouraged you and your sister to hide your emotions. They needed you to not have emotions, so you did everything you could to comply. What do you think?”

“It makes sense.” Which it does—but it also feels like betrayal. And shameful, because let’s face it, the very fact that he’s sitting in a room in Summertown, spilling his emotional guts all over a therapist, shows that he’s failed his parents pretty spectacularly.

She thinks for a while and James watches the light pouring through a cobalt-blue glass bowl on the window ledge. He thinks about Lewis, sitting behind his desk, frowning at some report or other. 

Rose pulls him back again. “James, would I be right in assuming you come across children, young people, sometimes through your work? You meet young people at difficult times in their lives.”

He’s a little confused by the shift in focus. “Yes, regularly.”

“And are they distressed, at times?”

“Of course. They’re frightened, traumatised; completely lost, some of them.”

“And when you meet them, these lost, frightened children, do you tell them they shouldn’t feel what they’re feeling, that they shouldn’t have any emotions? Do you tell them to grow up and stop making such a fuss?”

_Ah, fuck._ He closes his leaden eyes. “No.”

“Even though you might be uncomfortable with so much emotion? Even though you might not know what to do to help?”

He feels so sad he could cry. “No.”

“Can you look at me, James? Just for a moment.”

He opens his eyes. It’s the hardest thing, meeting her kind gaze.

“Why do you try not to say those things to them? Even though sometimes it’d be much easier for you if they weren’t so emotional?”

“Because—” He has to close his eyes again, and a crowd of sorrows envelop him. He makes himself say it. “It would be brutal. It’d be like seeing that they were bruised and bleeding and deciding to slap them anyway.”

He hears her breathe out, almost like she’s relieved. He opens his eyes to look at her.

“I’m sure you’ve joined it all up, James, but I’m going to spell it out, just to be sure. You’re generally not too comfortable with emotions, and yet, when you meet young people in tough situations, you do your best to be supportive and validating because you can see that painful, messy emotions are completely appropriate at those times; maybe you can even see that they’re necessary. And you want to be kind and not make things even worse for those young people. Yes?”

He nods.

“But, if I’ve understood correctly, you have a very different stance towards yourself as a child, and by extension, towards your adult self. Is that right?”

He never knew that grief could weigh so much. How does Lewis bear it? How has he fucking borne it, all these years? “Yes.” It’s no more than a whisper.

“You learned from your parents how to shame yourself about your emotional life; how to deny the existence of whole parts of yourself. That may not have been the lesson they intended you to learn, but I can’t imagine how a child in your situation could have taken away anything else. But even though emotions are difficult and scary for you, you’ve managed to find ways to be kind and helpful to other people when they’re emotionally all over the place.”

He rallies himself to object. “There have been many times when I have been anything but kind.”

She doesn’t try to convince him he’s mistaken. Instead, she gives him a soft smile, a smile that says _you and me both._ “I understand, James. But how do you feel now, looking back at those times when you were less than kind?”

“Ashamed. Ashamed of myself.”

She nods. “So you wish you’d been kinder? You see the value, the importance of kindness as a response to suffering and struggle?”

“Yes.”

“OK, so the question is this then: when will you start treating yourself with kindness? When will you start treating yourself with the same care you know is vital for everybody else?”

He’s so weary. He has the strongest urge to just curl up in this armchair and sleep for days. He gets an image of her draping a blanket over him and shakes his head to get rid of it. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

She doesn’t seem at all fazed. “That’s OK; you don’t need to know right now—we can work that out together.” Her voice is so soft, so gentle with him, that he can feel it in his heart, in the tiny cracks and fissures forming there. She looks at him, steadily. “But the first step, James, is making the decision; having the intention to stop doing to yourself what your parents inadvertently taught you to do. The first step to any of this changing is you making a commitment to care for yourself, even before you really know how to. You turn up to see me every week, even though you obviously find the sessions difficult, so I think the impulse to do something different, to take care of yourself, is definitely there.”

His body is so heavy he feels like he’ll never be able to haul it out of the chair. And he aches all over, like he’s been beaten up, which is ironic given how kind she’s being to him. But somewhere, in some small, hidden place inside, he wants her to be right. He can’t imagine how she might be, how any of this might be possible—how he’ll ever have the energy or the resolve to do any of this differently. But it is the truth that some small, persistent part of him wants her to be right; and presumably that’s progress of sorts.


	5. Early July: Session 9: Loving-kindness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

It seems like all that he’s felt for weeks is sadness. Everything about the cases they’ve had, every piece of music, every poem; everything has felt like it’s breaking his heart. He’s done his best to follow Rose’s instructions to just let himself feel it: he’s let himself sink into the almost comforting, smothering depths of it. Also at Rose’s request, he’s done his best to keep away from alcohol, other than the occasional pint with Lewis. And even those have been few and far between, because there’s only so much concerned scrutiny he can take, and he’s getting enough of it in therapy. 

But today, for no particular reason James can discern, Lewis has been an irritable bastard all day, and it’s proved infectious. As he’d driven out to Summertown for therapy after work, he’d found himself having pissed-off, sarky conversations in his head with Lewis, amongst others: not exactly pleasant, but a twisted kind of relief from the unending drag of his sorrow.

The session has drifted into a conversation about the costs of his use of self-criticism as a means of motivating himself, and he hasn’t exactly been rude to Rose, but there’s a definite layer of something spikey and protective covering the sadness today. She hasn’t said anything about it, but he doesn’t doubt that she’s noticed. They lapse into silence and she looks at him intently, her head tilted to one side.

“James, you might know that Buddhists do a practice called metta—in the West it’s usually called loving-kindness practice. The word metta is Pali, the language of many of the early Buddhist teachings.

He looks blandly at her. “I know what Pali is. It’s a Prakrit language. It developed in Northern India about 5000 BC.”

She smiles. “Of course you do—sorry. Do you know about metta—loving-kindness practice?”

He shakes his head, not at all sure he likes where this conversation is headed. 

“Metta practice is based on a set of phrases you repeat to yourself and meditate on—people tend to personalise them, but they’re along the lines of: 

May I be well.  
May I be happy.  
May I know love and kindness.  
May I know ease of mind.” 

_Great_. It sounds like New Age, positive psychology nonsense, for all it’s supposed Buddhist credentials; like trying to brainwash yourself. 

He says as much. “I can’t see how whispering sweet nothings to myself is magically going to make me feel better, no matter how many times I repeat the happy little phrases. Well-meaning people have been telling me to do something along those lines for years.” 

There’s a little emphasis on the _well-meaning_ , a hint of an insult about it that he’s not proud of, once he’s said it, but he doesn’t retract it.

She doesn’t show any signs of having registered the insult. In the early sessions he used to wonder whether she just wasn’t sharp enough to pick up his subtext. He would sometimes think _Lewis would have got it_ , using the thought of his boss to momentarily take himself away from whatever uncomfortable point Rose was easing him towards. Now, he thinks that not much gets past her, which he supposes is a good quality in a therapist, though having spent most of his life trying to keep everything that really matters hidden from view, he doesn’t find her kindly but unwavering attentiveness easy to bear. 

It’s also unsettling to realise that she doesn’t miss much, because at times like these, when he hasn’t been particularly nice to her, it means she almost definitely knows he hasn’t been nice, but she never seems troubled by it. Which means either she’s pretending she doesn’t feel insulted, though from what he knows of her, that seems very unlikely; or, she knows he’s had a dig at her, but somehow it doesn’t bother her; it doesn’t make her back off or think less of him. In fact, sometimes, when he knows he’s been particularly shitty, she does this thing where she kind of pauses and closes her eyes for a second or two, and when she opens them again, she looks at him with such tenderness, such care, he inevitably wants to sob his heart out, though of course he never does.

This time she just nods. “Quite right. Trying to force yourself to feel a certain way doesn’t usually work, does it—for any of us? It might be more helpful to think of metta as practicing sending yourself good wishes, or having kind intentions towards yourself, regardless of how you feel.” She smiles the soft, twinkly smile that he’s come to recognise signals the gentlest of teasing, “And you know, given that Buddhists have been finding benefit in metta for two and a half thousand years, maybe it’s just possible there might be something in it, despite your mind insisting otherwise?”

Initially, he’d found this distinction she makes between him and his mind, completely baffling. They’d had a couple of tussles about it, early on. Well, he’s expressed his scepticism—she hasn’t really done a lot of tussling. What she seems to use the distinction for is to suggest that he can choose to do things, can choose to act towards himself in a particular way, for example, even if his mind says otherwise. She uses it to encourage him to take some perspective on his thoughts—a rather alien notion. 

She carries on. “Like all these kinds of things, James, they’re practices, not ideas. You’d have to actually give it a go—practice it, explore it, investigate it thoroughly, to know if there’s anything in it for you. Anyway, it’s just a possibility. Entirely up to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another therapy session in James' POV, but not as focussed on his childhood or other past experiences as the last session, and not as emotionally painful.


	6. End of July: Session 12: Three weeks later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm off on holiday today until just before Christmas, so there'll be a little break in posting. With that in mind, I thought I'd share the next couple of chapters before I disappear. I hope you enjoy them :-)
> 
>  
> 
> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

After their initial greeting at the start of the session, they sit in silence for a long time. James’ attention is caught by the early evening light illuminating the mossy green vase at the end of the windowsill. He’s come to appreciate this collection of blue and green glass vases and bowls. They’re beautiful, their jewel colours bringing a sense of stained glass and church stillness to the room. But it’s also helpful to have somewhere for his attention to go when the therapy’s difficult. He finds he’s with the glassware a lot in the sessions—when he’s not with Lewis. 

He starts talking, without realising he’s going to. “I’ve been doing some research on metta practice. John Peacock, the Pali scholar, suggests that loving-kindness is a sloppy translation. Standing alongside, or befriending would be more accurate.”

She seems amused. She doesn’t seem to mind him correcting her or educating her like this. “He called it sloppy, did he? Good to know. Which term do you prefer—standing alongside or befriending?”

He hasn’t thought about it in terms of preference, just correctness. “I don’t know.”

“Have you had a go at the practice?”

“Yes. I bought a book about it. It had a CD with it so I’ve used that to practice.”

“And?”

“It’s—it feels as inauthentic as I thought it would. I’ve done it for half an hour every day for the last three weeks, and I felt as foolish doing it yesterday as I did the first time.”

He finds he often can’t predict what will catch her interest, what direction she’ll steer a session in. This time, he assumes she’s going to explore with him how he might be doing the practice wrong, that he should try harder, perhaps. Instead, she asks: “Why did you practice every day for the last three weeks? I know you’re a busy man; you have plenty of other uses for your time?”

The question blindsides him. He frowns and shrugs. “Because you suggested I should.”

She nods. “OK. Why else?”

She wants more? Of course she does. “Because I have some interest in Buddhist ideas, and in the relationship between what was originally recorded in Pali and the practices of Western Buddhists now. The loss of rigour and fierceness, the softening over time and distance.”

She nods again. “Good. And why else?” 

He turns to the vases for inspiration but they prove disobliging. The silence stretches out. He thinks about how long it is until the session ends. He gets an image of Lewis, tired after a long day at work, rubbing a hand absentmindedly over the bristles of his five o’clock shadow. Eventually he sighs. “Yes, all right. I can see that being kinder to myself might be helpful—if it were possible.”

If she feels triumphant, she doesn’t show it. Her voice is gentle, as if he needs holding carefully. “So, in a world where it were possible to wish yourself kindness and love—you would want to do that? You would want to give yourself those things?”

Maybe it’s the gentleness in her voice, but suddenly he feels unformed, defenceless. “Yes.”

“Sounds like you’re doing good work, James.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

They settle back into silence. He’s grateful that she gives him space like this, when his feelings are stirred up. He usually can’t think clearly when he’s full of emotion, and it feels like being out in no-man’s-land, unarmed. Which she seems to understand. She doesn’t bombard him with questions, but instead waits with him. She seems to think that him just feeling whatever it is, with her alongside him, is enough. 

He can’t even name his current emotional state. He gets an image of the earth’s crust cracking open and hot lava bubbling up through it. He can feel the cracking, a kind of breaking apart, down the centre of his chest. It hurts to breathe but he has to anyway. They sit together in the quiet room; her, apparently calm and unworried, while he feels the shifting of the fault lines over his heart. 

Slowly things ease, the tectonic plates of his chest settle back together again, covering the soft stuff underneath. He rallies himself. “I assume you know that traditionally, metta practice isn’t just focussed on oneself?”

“I do, but I’d like you to tell me about it.”

Is she indulging him? Testing him? Neither seems likely. He takes a deep breath, sighing it back out so he can hear it. “The classical form of the practice involves sending the same good wishes to a series of people, one after the other. You go through the phrases—may _you_ be well, may _you_ be happy and so on—for each person: someone you care about but with whom you have a challenging relationship, maybe someone you hate, if you have such a person, a stranger to represent the whole of humanity, and someone you care about wholly, without hesitation. There are different views on what order to work through these various recipients of your bonhomie.” He feels like he’s just read out his homework in front of the teacher.

“And where does the meditator draw all this love and kindness from? Where in the body?”

He looks down, inspects his hands, one of which has taken hold of the other. “The heart, somehow.”

“Yes.” She watches him for a moment, thinking. “I assume you’ve been practicing the correct, classical form? The whole shebang?” They exchange a look, a little moment of connection, a moment of appreciation for his tendency to take the most thorough, proper approach to whatever he’s doing; even something he really doesn’t want to be doing.

The corners of his mouth lift. “Naturally.”

“So?”

“So, most of it was as impossible as the self-focussed part.”

“Most of it? I see.” She gazes at him. “Which bit wasn’t impossible?” She really doesn’t miss a bloody trick.

He can feel himself warming, heat rising up from his chest, into his neck and cheeks, something that has also started happening when he does the meditation practice. He can’t look at her. “The last one, the _someone you care about without hesitation_ bit.”

Her voice sounds affectionate when she responds. “I’m glad there’s someone you feel that way about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another therapy session in James' POV - quite emotional in places but not particularly focussed on his childhood or other past experiences as the first session we saw him in


	7. Early August: Session 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

Well, she’s seen him looking worse. He seems a bit tired, but it is a Friday evening, so that’s not so surprising. But he looks just a little less burdened, too.

“How are you, James.” 

“I’m not too bad, actually. I’ve just finished work for a week. My annual leave days have built up over the last year or so, so much to the Chief Superintendent’s surprise and joy, I’m taking next week off.”

“Having a holiday sounds like a great idea. Are you going away?”

“It’s not actually a holiday, as such. I’ve got quite a lot of jobs that need doing round the flat. I’ve got a load of IKEA book shelves that have been in their boxes for over a year, and there’s piles of stuff to sort out for the charity shop. Not onerous tasks—it’ll just be good to get them done. I might try to paint the kitchen too—it’s been dingy beige since I moved in two years ago and it’s finally started to get to me.”

She hesitates—a couple of options for exploration occur to her. She notices her reluctance to go with the possibility most likely to stir up painful emotions for him. It’s a relief to see him on a somewhat more even keel and engaged in this kind of care of his home. They could have a perfectly fruitful conversation about the symbolism of this care, this transformation of his rented flat, finally, into a home. But she knows there’s other, more difficult, more fundamental work to be done. 

“Sounds like you’re going to be busy. Have you asked anyone for help with any of it?”

He looks surprised; offended, even. “No. They’re all jobs I can do on my own.”

“I’m sure you can, but sometimes it’s good to ask for help, anyway.”

He doesn’t look convinced in the slightest, but says nothing.

“James, as I raise this possibility of asking for help, what’s showing up for you – thoughts, feelings?” Over the last month or so he’s become much more able to identify his feelings, so she’s started to ask him directly. 

He frowns. “I feel—a bit blank, really. I wouldn’t know who to ask, or how to ask, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

“OK. Anything else?”

He closes his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t think it would ever occur to me to ask for help like that; particularly with something I can actually do myself.”

“Because if you did feel the impulse to ask?”

He looks directly at her. “I wouldn’t act on the impulse.”

And all of a sudden they’re right up close to something important. She feels the need to move slowly, carefully. She breathes out and softens her voice so that what comes out is nothing like a demand or interrogation, and everything like the caring enquiry of a friend.

"Because if you did act on the impulse; if you did ask for help?”

He turns his head to the side, looking away from her. It feels like he’s unconsciously trying to hide from her gaze. She’s not sure if he’s going to answer, but after an audible swallow, he does.

“What’s the point? It’s better not to rely on people, if you have the choice. I mean, people don’t always want to help, or they can’t help even if they want to. In my experience it’s just easier not to go there.”

“James, I wonder, would you be able to look at me for a moment?”

He complies, making eye-contact briefly, but he struggles to stop his gaze sliding away, over her shoulder to the window.

“James, this might not be right, so correct me if that’s the case, but I’m going to mention it just in case. People often feel ashamed of needing help, ashamed of needing anything, sometimes.”

He seems to be holding his breath but she’s not quite sure until he finally takes in a gulp of air. He clears his throat and keeps looking out the window.

“It’s not really shame, I don’t think. It’s more—well, being needy isn’t something to aspire to really, is it?”

“No? What does being needy mean to you?”

He’s starting to sound frustrated with her. “You know what it means. Being dependent on other people; being incapable of looking after yourself properly; being unreasonable, demanding, weak.”

“Was anyone like that in your family when you were growing up?”

He actually looks amused, in a grim kind of way. “Absolutely not. It—” He stops, then starts again. “It just wouldn’t have been a possibility. You have to understand—it’s unimaginable.” He suddenly sounds quite agitated.

“So if anyone in the family did, secretly, need help or support or anything like that, what would they have done?”

She watches the energy drain out of him. His shoulders sink and he just seems to shrink. “They’d have kept it to themselves.”

“And what might they have said to themselves about it, in the privacy of their own mind?”

“I imagine they’d have told themselves not to be so bloody pathetic.”

_Ah_. She softens her voice even more. “And when they said that to themselves— _don’t be so bloody pathetic_ —who would they have sounded like?”

He’s silent for a whole minute, staring resolutely out of the window. Eventually he rubs his hands over his face and sighs. “Dad.” 

He’s quiet again for a moment. “Although Nell does a pretty good version these days—more to herself than others, though.”

She wonders if he’ll jump to his father’s defence, as he has in previous sessions. She waits, and the silence stretches out. He’s still staring out the window but he doesn’t look like he’s completely taken himself off somewhere else. The fingers of his right hand start tapping quite forcefully against his thigh. 

“Try to turn the volume up on it, James. See if you can say it out loud.”

He presses his lips together for the longest time and she feels that all she can do is wait. 

Finally, he meets her gaze. “It wasn’t OK. I can see it wasn’t OK. I want to defend him, and I could defend him—I mean, he really didn’t know any better—you should have met _his_ father— _Christ_. But—it was—shit, actually.” And suddenly, he’s on a roll. “I mean, I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, which I suppose is telling in itself, but there are enough memories of me being really very young and being upset about something, or just, you know, something seeming like an insurmountable problem because I was six or seven and didn’t know how to solve whatever it was . . . and mostly it wasn’t too bad—he’d say some version of _big boys don’t cry_. But sometimes, if I hadn’t pulled myself together quickly enough, or if he was just in a bad mood . . . he could be really vicious. And he wasn’t any easier on Nell because she was a girl—and she was even younger.” He stops, suddenly. “Shit.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve just remembered. _Shit_. Nell was crying about something. She could only have been five or six at the time—I think a friend at school had been in some sort of accident and Nell was upset and crying. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table trying to listen to the radio, and she was standing in the middle of the kitchen, just crying. I don’t know where Mum was. And suddenly he got up so quickly his chair tipped over and he stood right in front of her, towered over her, and just bellowed at her to stop crying . . . and she did. She looked so shocked, like she’d just run full pelt into a brick wall; or like she’d been slapped. Her face just went blank; like she’d found the off-switch.” He shakes his head. 

She watches him carefully. He’s clearly upset, and there’s a little anger there too, which she views as a good sign. But he doesn’t seem to be as wrecked by these memories and emotions as he was even a few sessions ago. He does seem more able to feel and remember, and not be so fully demolished by what he’s feeling and remembering. 

“You can do that too, can’t you? Switch yourself off like that?”

He nods and gives her a bit of an ironic smile. “It can be useful at work, sometimes.”

“I imagine it can. But you’ve got some clues about the origins of this ability now. And maybe you’re beginning to get a sense of the costs you’ve paid—are still paying—for acting on your father’s instructions, perhaps about many things?”

“I suppose so.” He looks sad and weary, but he does look at her.

“Which isn’t to say you had any choice as a child. It’s really only as adults that most of us get any real ability to step away from our parents’ influence when that’s the helpful thing to do. And even as adults, we can’t really change those old patterns of feelings and behaviour until we’re aware of them—and take ourselves seriously enough to want to improve things.”

She watches him process it all. He’s a complete joy to work with. Of course he’s stubborn and oppositional and intellectually exhausting, but she considers these qualities to be survival strategies he developed when he was very young, and she rejoices that he’d had the ability to do what he’d needed to do to drag himself through the often bleak landscape of his childhood. She rejoices even though the survival strategies he developed back then sometimes make him hard work as a client now. Because apart from anything else, the very same stubbornness and tenacity and intelligence and courage mean that he’s doing the work he needs to do with her. He obviously would rather be anywhere but sitting with her, picking at the scabs of his childhood, but he’s doing the work he needs to do . . . and she can see the changes in him already. He’s much more able to have feelings and just feel them than he was even a couple of months ago. He’s taking better care of himself, at least on a practical level, perhaps than he ever has. And whether he’s consciously aware of it or not, each week he moves more fully into the therapeutic relationship. He lets himself be supported and comforted and reassured by her sometimes now, and more and more he’s at least trusting her to do her job rather than feeling that he needs to be both therapist and client.

“James, we have just a few minutes left today, but can I ask you—we started this conversation talking about your feeling that there’s no point in asking people for help. I’m curious: you asked me for help—how do you feel that’s working out for you so far?”

He gives her a little _OK, you’ve got me there smile._ “I am finding our sessions helpful; I think you know that. But—I hope this isn’t offensive, I don’t mean it to be—I do pay you—it’s not like you’re helping me for purely altruistic reasons.”

She smiles. “Of course, and no, it’s not offensive at all—you paying me is one aspect of the reality of our work together. But does that negate the fact that you asked for my help?”

“No, it doesn’t—but it did make it easier to ask.”

“So we could see it as pretty skilful of you to find a way to make it possible to ask for the help you needed?” 

“I suppose.”

“But it does raise the possibility that a next step might be to ask for some sort of help or support from someone outside of this kind of professional therapeutic relationship.”

He looks alarmed, as well he might—it’s a significant step for him. She thinks for a moment then goes on a hunch. “What would it be like to ask Inspector Lewis for help with something—one of the jobs you’re planning for next week, maybe?”

Now he really does look alarmed, but she likes the colour that’s showing up in his cheeks. 

“Why ask about him, specifically?”

“Because I get the sense he’s an important person in your life.”

“He’s my boss.”

“Of course.”

He looks relieved.

She smiles at him. “Does that mean you think he wouldn’t want to help you?”

He sighs, eloquently, and spends a few moments inspecting his well-polished shoes. “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another therapy session, but from Rose's POV. Focussed on the psychologically damaging consequences of aspects of James' childhood. Contains one brief description of an emotionally abusive experience in childhood.


	8. Mid August: Session 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content.

She can tell, even as he sits down, that he has something to tell her. He hasn’t said anything other than hello, but there’s something, just a slight energetic uplift about him, that says _I’ve got something to talk about_. Of course, they still have the obligatory few minutes’ silence—even with something to talk about, James isn’t likely to just start talking. Once she feels he’s had a chance to settle himself, she starts them off. “How was your week at home, James?”

Little spots of pink bloom in his cheeks. _Excellent._

“Good, actually. I got a lot done.” He drops into silence again.

She takes a risk. “Did you do it all by yourself?”

His cheeks blaze. “No. Well, most of it. Inspector Lewis helped me paint the kitchen.”

_Aha._ “Will you tell me how that came about?”

“I asked him. Actually, that’s not really accurate. We met up for a drink last Sunday and I told him I was going to do some decorating and showed him the colour I’d chosen. He asked if I needed to borrow a step-ladder to reach the ceiling and I said yes, thinking that was my therapy homework done. So he said he’d bring the ladder round on his way to work on Monday morning.”

He stops and she feels the urge to give him a gentle shove to get him talking again. She decides that this isn’t purely to satisfy her own curiosity and allows herself to act on the urge.

“So what happened?”

He shakes his head, as if he still can’t quite believe it. “Lewis turned up at seven thirty on Monday morning, wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt sporting more paint splatters than a Jackson Pollock, and proceeded to unpack a whole car-load of tools, brushes, step ladder—everything a person might need to set up their own painting and decorating business—and offered his services for Operation Scrambled Egg—a reference, apparently, to his views on the paint colour. He did also say that he couldn’t see what’s wrong with beige. _Philistine._ ” She doubts he’s aware of how fond his smile is as he says this.

“But wasn’t he meant to have been going to work?”

“Indeed he was. But apparently, he’d left a message for the Chief Superintendent on Sunday night, no less, claiming something important had come up and that he’d have to take three days’ annual leave.”

She feels happiness wash through her, and she smiles at him. “How does it feel, knowing that Inspector Lewis sees helping you as important?”

James is doing more frowning than smiling. “I don’t think he does actually see it as important. He just said that to make sure Innocent OK’d the days off.”

“But doesn’t that imply it was important to him to make sure he got the time off so he could help you?”

James concedes the point but looks rather miserable about it.

“Based on what we talked about last week, I’m assuming none of this was particularly comfortable for you?”

He gives her a _that’s a bloody understatement_ look.

“So how did you respond, when Lewis turned up announcing he was going to help?”

James visibly winces. “I told him I didn’t need his help and he should sod off back to work. Not quite in those words, but the message was pretty clear.”

_Ah, James._ “And how did that go down with him?”

“He did his _saddest puppy at the RSPCA act_ and told me he’d really been looking forward to doing a bit of painting—that he finds it relaxing and that all the stretching involved is good for his bad back. He was shameless.” He shakes his head but the fond smile is back. “I didn’t stand a chance.”

If Lewis were here right now she’d almost certainly kiss him. Sometimes, the people in her clients’ lives, whether intentionally or otherwise, really get in the way of therapeutic progress. But occasionally, some angel does exactly what’s needed, precisely when it’s needed.

“I can see that that would be pretty hard to hold out against.” They share a smile.

“So what was it actually like, having him help you decorate?”

He gives her an amused shrug. “It was OK, once I got over my initial horror. He genuinely did seem to be enjoying himself. He’d brought a paint-covered, ancient, portable transistor radio and insisted on listening to some awful soft rock station. I got my revenge by feeding him vegan food. He claims he’ll never eat hummus again.” There’s a further exchange of smiles.

“So the whole being helped thing turned out OK?”

He cautiously agrees, but gives her a look that clearly says _don’t get any ideas about me making a habit of it._

She gazes back at him, non-committedly, and he sighs and rolls his eyes—the very picture of the long-suffering client. She finds that she’s very optimistic about his therapeutic progress.

“And just out of interest, James, how does the kitchen look?”

“It’s good, thanks. I really like the colour, though it looks a fair bit different to how it looked on the chart. It’s—” he tilts his head to one side as he’s thinking, “—a lot sunnier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another therapy session from Rose's POV, but not focussing on James' childhood or anything particularly emotionally challenging or upsetting


	9. Mid September – between sessions 15 and 16: James and Lewis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

Whatever relaxation the two of them may have enjoyed while painting James’ kitchen, has quickly evaporated now they’re back at work and have a new case. They’re investigating the last days of Justin Grant, a first year history student who’s been found dead amongst the bins and detritus behind the branch of J D Sports where he’d worked part-time. His head’s been stoved in with something heavy and wooden—possibly a baseball bat.

The day before his murder, he’d taken part in a research study in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Psychiatry; something to do with worry and memory. He’d spent twenty minutes in a small laboratory cubical with a post-doctoral researcher, and it seems highly unlikely that this brief investigation into the workings of his psyche in exchange for five pounds is linked with his death, but of course they can’t make any assumptions at this stage.

The post-doc and his supervisor—a consultant psychiatrist based both at the university and the local NHS mental health Trust—aren’t exactly unhelpful, but neither are they particularly warm or sympathetic. The supervisor in particular is clearly irritated by what she views as a waste of her time and makes no attempts to hide it.

The meeting with them has obviously energised Lewis, and not in a good way. James has to put some effort into keeping up with him as he strides out of Blandford College. Lewis doesn’t even wait till they’re back in the car before he starts.

“Bloody psychiatrists, trick cyclists, whatever they are! Rummaging around in people’s heads like that! They’ve made a handful of students worry using a daft cartoon on a computer, called it science, and decided they’ve cracked the code to human bloody suffering!” He’s really getting into his stride. “And as for bloody psychotherapists—they’re the worst of the lot! I can’t think of anything more depressing than sitting there politely, week after week, while some nosy sod rummages through your misery and charges you ninety quid an hour for the privilege.”

James doesn’t say anything but he must pull some sort of face because Lewis glares at him. “What?! If you’ve got something to say, say it. I’ve never had the impression you think anything different about that sort.”

James’ heart beats uncomfortably in his throat. “Actually, sir, I’m seeing one—a psychotherapist.”

Lewis frowns. “What d’ya mean, _seeing one_? Are you telling me you’re courting?!”

“No! I’m telling you I’m seeing a therapist—as a client.”

Lewis just stares at him, apparently still not managing to grasp the point.

“I’m having therapy, sir.”

Understanding finally dawns on Lewis’ face. He looks shocked, horrified even, as if James has just told him he’s been caught swindling old ladies out of their life savings. James waits while Lewis marshals his expression into something a little less incredulous, and he sees the moment when Lewis joins up the dots.

“I take it that’s where you kept disappearing off to at the start of the summer?”

James nods. “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not.”

“I didn’t think you believed in therapy.” Lewis looks at him grumpily, as if James has just told him he’s joined UKIP or taken up cage fighting.

All James can do is shrug. “Neither did I.”

“I see.” Lewis frowns. “So how does it work? You go every now and then for a chat?”

“No, I’ve been going weekly since May—fifteen sessions so far.”

Lewis’ eyes widen as he takes that in and then the frown reappears. “Are you OK, James? I mean, I know the job can be rough. And we’ve had some bloody awful cases this year.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You do know you can . . . well, talk to me? You know, about work. _Things._ You don’t have to pay someone. Well, you could buy me the occasional pint.”

James is aware of how out of Lewis’ comfort zone talking about _things_ would be; he can see what a generous—and genuine—offer it is, despite the gruff and awkward way Lewis has delivered the offer. “Thank you. But it’s not work. Well, not just work.” He’s not sure what else to say. But something about the way Lewis seems to have so quickly let go of his initial disbelief and judgement and is making wildly uncomfortable offers of talk spurs James on to try and say a bit more. “I’m seeing Rose Harrison; you know, from the Macaulay case.”

Lewis looks startled for a moment, but then nods. “Aye, well, I have to admit, _she_ did seem nice. Kind. Bright, too.”

“She is—all those things.” 

They drop into silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Eventually Lewis looks at him. “Is it helping?”

“I think so, yes.”

Lewis gives him a little smile, as if to say _well then, what do I know_? “Good.”

James hadn’t known how much he wanted Lewis’ blessing until he had it. Warmth spreads through his chest. They start walking again, heading back to the nick.

“Anyway, sir, I do buy you the occasional pint. More than occasional. Many pints have I bought.”

Lewis smirks a little. “I should think so, given all the wisdom and therapy I dish out. Only proper the occasional pint changes hands.” He goes quiet and looks thoughtful for a moment. “You haven’t gone during the day for a while? Or have my detective skills been failing me?”

“No, sir. Your detecting abilities remain undiminished—I shifted the sessions to the evening, once a slot came free.”

“I see. Well, if that ever doesn’t work, you can take the time during the day. Just tell me, James, so I know where you are. I don’t like not knowing where you are.”

A surge of emotion threatens to engulf James. One of the unpredicted side-effects of therapy has been that his feelings—good and bad—are much nearer the surface. Lewis just needs to look at him some days and James feels as if he could easily cry or laugh or some mortifying combination of the two. It’s bloody inconvenient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief chapter involving James and Robbie - not a therapy session. No discussion of anything particularly troubling beyond mention of canon-type violence in relation to a case they're working on.


	10. Mid September: Session 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

He really wants to see Rose, which is a shock when he realises it. She’s been away on holiday for two weeks and even though the sessions have been less harrowing recently, he’d thought he’d be only too glad to have a break. Not so much a break from Rose—he likes her; he appreciates her solidity, her steadiness in the face of his wilder emotions. And he enjoys that the sessions can be surprisingly humorous, that she can drop the driest of comments into the middle of the most delicate, painful therapeutic moment, not to take him away from the pain, but to remind him that she’s still there with him, that they share this connection. No, he’d just thought he’d be glad of a break from the long, difficult silences and from being repeatedly ambushed and bludgeoned by his past.

But it’s been an eventful couple of weeks and he actually can’t wait to tell her, to chew it all over with her. Actually, more honestly, he knows what he really wants is her approval. He’s done enough reading up on attachment-focussed psychodynamic psychotherapy—which is roughly speaking what they’re doing—to know that it’s common for clients to transfer their need for parental support and approval onto their therapist. But even being forearmed in this way has not helped him resist. And it’s not like she’s done anything to explicitly encourage it—she’s never said anything so crass as _you could think of me as a mother figure._ She doesn’t even look like a maternal figure to him, despite her being old enough. It’s more, well, her particular brand of down-to-earth kindness, her intelligence used to support and comfort rather than attack—it’s all proved irresistible to him, in the end. He missed her when she was away. He’s fantasised about being in this next session and telling her his news. The truth is, he feels attached to her. It’s terrifying.

They’re sitting looking at each other, not saying anything, which is stupid because he does want to talk to her, but finds he doesn’t know how to start. She helps him out:

“How have you been while I’ve been away?”

“Good, actually. It’s been . . . eventful.”

She smiles. “Tell me.”

“I told Lewis. About being in therapy.”

She nods. “How did it go?”

“Once he got over the initial shock, he was fine about it.”

She’s quiet for a while, thinking. Then she looks at him with curiosity. “Why does Lewis’ opinion matter so much, do you think?”

The question stumps him because the answer’s obvious but impossible to articulate in a way that she’d understand—Lewis’ opinion matters because he’s Lewis. 

“Well, he’s my boss.”

“Of course.” She smiles at him. “But when you think back over your previous bosses, would their opinion about you and what you’re doing in your private life have mattered as much?”

_Shit._ “No. Probably not.”

“Tell me more, then.”

“I’m not sure I know what to say. I’m not trying to be awkward, honestly.”

She nods. “Can we try something? What might be called a thought experiment?”

“OK.”

“Can you picture Lewis? See him in your mind’s eye? Maybe close your eyes, if it helps.”

The irony of Rose inviting him to do what he’s so often done in therapy without her knowing—imagine Lewis—is not lost on him. Oh, maybe, somehow, she’s known all along that that’s what he does when things get too difficult? He wouldn’t put it past her. She’s not psychic—obviously—but just sometimes it seems like she’s not far off it. Not for the first time he thinks just how good a detective she’d make. 

He closes his eyes and thinks about where Lewis will be; what he’ll be doing. He’ll be at home, getting his dinner ready—some kind of hideous ready meal, no doubt. He gets an image of Lewis, still in his work shirt and trousers, but with his tie off and the top couple of buttons of his shirt undone. Lewis is sitting on his sofa, waiting for his dinner to cook. He’s looking through his post and frowning a bit at whatever it is he’s reading. Over Lewis’ shoulder James can see the picture of Mrs Lewis that sits on the shelf in the corner of his boss’ living room. 

As Lewis glances at his bills and junk mail, he looks tired, his face more lined than usual; like the week has taken it out of him. But he doesn’t look fragile. Tired, yes, but still solid, like he could handle whatever life is dishing out. He looks stern, but James knows that’s just how his face settles sometimes. He can sound stern, too, and bad-tempered, but it’d be a mistake to think that’s what Lewis is really like. Well, he can be at times, of course, but that’s not all of who he is; it’s not the heart of him.

“James?”

He’d completely forgotten where he is; that Rose is sitting opposite him, waiting. “Sorry.”

“How do you feel, when you think about him? How do you feel right now?”

“Safe.” It’s out before he can come up with something even slightly less revealing.

“Like he’s a good, dependable father figure, maybe?”

“Absolutely not!” He glares at her, appalled.

She smiles. “Well, you seem pretty clear about that. May I ask, is your horror because fathers are generally not good things in your experience and you don’t like Inspector Lewis being compared to one, or because you have rather more grown-up feelings about him?”

His heart wakes up and starts beating insistently in his chest. “Those are my only two options?”

She smiles at him. “By all means go with another option if I’m barking up the wrong tree. _Trees._ ”

He takes in a breath, trying to decide what to say. Another breath in and he sighs it out, making it last, holding onto the precious oxygen as if he might never manage to breathe again. He can’t look at her, directly. “Your choice of trees is not . . . wholly incorrect.”

“I see. Good.” She nods, thoughtfully. “And of the two trees I enquired about? Does one, in particular, ring bells—to offer you a spectacularly mangled metaphor?”

He loves that she can do this, this bringing humour to the most important moments, to support him without being disrespectful or dismissive or deflecting them away from the heart of what matters.

“I haven’t really let myself think about it before, not quite this . . . directly.” 

He clears his throat. _Christ_ ; he’s actually going to say it. “But if I’m being totally honest . . . both trees are campanologists.” He manages to get himself to meet her gaze and she smiles encouragingly at him. He can feel heat flooding into his face.

“Good to acknowledge, I think, James. The latter tree in particular, I mean.”

“I’m not quite sure why, if I’m honest.”

“Oh, well. I just mean, it’s much more difficult to purposely act on feelings if you’re only dimly aware of them.”

“ _Act on them_?!” Now his heart really is hammering. “Even if I wanted to, how could I possibly . . . I mean, he’s—” How to explain the impossibility of what she’s suggesting?

She smiles and raises her hands to calm him. “It’s OK, James. Don’t worry. I’m not going to set you a homework of asking him out on a date. It was just a passing thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Therapy session from James' POV, but nothing to warn for in the content


	11. Early November – between sessions 22 and 23: James and Lewis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content

It’s not been a bad week. The lack of violent or suspicious deaths has meant they’ve been helping out with a long-term investigation into the illegal importation of antiquities. The case is being run by the Met’s Art and Antiques Unit, but Oxford is a hot spot for the sale of historic artefacts, so there’s plenty of work to be done locally. Lewis has grumbled a bit about having to take orders from another DI, but actually, they’ve been working with a decent bunch, the case is interesting, and with no raids or arrests imminent, they get to have the whole weekend off. 

So, happily, Friday evening finds them in a quiet pub eating steak pie and chips, each with a pint of slightly over-chilled stout in front of them. It’s not usually James’ drink of choice; he tends to find stout rather rich and filling—he certainly can’t drink more than a couple of pints of it. But it had seemed like the perfect thing to go with the pie, and as he’s drinking a lot less than he used to anyway, he’s quite content with his choice.

Lewis puts his knife and fork down and takes a swig of beer. “How’s therapy going? Is it OK to ask? I’m not quite sure of the etiquette.”

Why should Lewis using the word _etiquette_ make James so happy? It’s ridiculous. “It’s going well, thank you. I’m going to finish just before Christmas, actually.”

“Are you cured? Is that the word?”

“I don’t think we’re meant to speak in quite those terms with psychotherapy. It’s not like having an infection and getting the right dose of antibiotics.”

Lewis raises an eyebrow. “That’s me told.”

James gives Lewis a bit of a smile and notes the surprising urge to say something more. “I may not be cured, but things are a lot better than they were, though that may not be obvious to anyone other than myself.”

Lewis nods. “Well, I can definitely see a difference. You seem more content; less hard on yourself, maybe.”

James wonders if the evidence that Lewis has been paying attention to him, observing him, will ever stop feeling so fluster-inducing. “It’s all taking some getting used to, sir; the lack of constant misery.” He’s aiming for facetious but clearly misses it by some distance, judging by the pained look on Lewis’ face.

Lewis takes a long drink then carefully puts down his glass. “I admire you, James; I mean it. I didn’t even make it through one session of counselling after Val died, but you’ve stuck with it. I know it can’t have been easy.”

“No, it hasn’t been easy.” How best to explain it? “But I just got so fed up with myself in the end; tired of being miserable and angry all the time. There wasn’t even a final straw that I can identify—I just finally got to the point where not doing something about it was even worse than doing something.”

“Well, you seem happier.”

James smiles, a little self-deprecatingly. “Yes, I am.”

Lewis holds his gaze.” I’m glad.”

“I suspect I might be a little easier to be around, too?”

“You were never difficult, James.”

“I think we both know that’s not true, sir.”

“Well, you’re always going to be a bit of an awkward sod, aren’t you? But, I mean, that’s OK. You’re OK. You’ve always been OK.” He frowns. “You know what I’m trying to say.”

It’s hard to know who’s looking more uncomfortable. Eventually, Lewis clears his throat. “Right—another pint and a change of subject?”

“Gladly.” James heads off to the bar to get the round in. While he’s waiting to be served, he takes the opportunity to give his heart a good talking to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief chapter involving James and Robbie - not a therapy session. No discussion of anything particularly troubling.


	12. Early December: Session 27: Last planned session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content.

He’s impatient to see her but there’s no point getting to her office early because she’ll still be with her previous client. But it’s taking a lot of effort to stay in his car and not just start pacing up and down outside her building. 

They’ve been working towards this session being their last one, at least for the time being, though it's not like everything is completely hunk dory now, of course. He’s still prone to self-criticism; there are still plenty of times when he catches himself working his way through a well-practiced list of failings: his own, personal Rosary of self-reproach. But it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be, and he has, finally, accepted the need to take care of himself. In the height of the summer he finally shifted from his old denial that he had ever needed anything from his parents beyond food and shelter and education, to the desolation of knowing that he had always needed so much from them, and that he will now never have his needs met by them. This realisation has in no way been an easier place to be than the denial.

But, this acknowledgement of his needs and of his parent’ failings, terrible though it has been, has freed him up to see more accurately the options open to him now, as an adult. He now sees, at last, that there is a possibility of taking care of himself, and of allowing or even inviting other people to support and care for him. Of course, there is still the other, more familiar possibility of continuing to flail about in life, damaging himself as he smacks against every hard edge that life offers him, until such times as he does himself irreparable harm. But finally, with Rose’s support and care and modelling, he has fundamentally rejected the latter course. Finally, exhausted by the drama and the struggling, he has made the decision to care for himself as best he can. It doesn’t come naturally to him, and his efforts are still, at times, accompanied by a choice selection of self-mocking thoughts, but he does what he needs to do anyway. And as the weeks have turned into months, it’s become easier; and the sleep and meditation and lack of booze and returning again and again to the possibility that he is as deserving of care and love as any other person—all of this work has brought about a transformation; not so much of _who_ he is, but more of _how_ he is with himself. There are now moments when he actually feels safe in his own skin; moments when he genuinely trusts that if he lets himself feel vulnerable, he won’t immediately attack himself.

He knows there’s a lot more work he and Rose could usefully do. For starters, they’ve barely touched on his relationship with Nell; and as for his relationship with Catholicism, _Jesus_ , that could keep Rose busy until she retires. But the truth is he’s in a much better place than he’s ever been, and it feels like the right time to just get on with his life for a while without her. Well, it had felt like the right time. But now Lewis has— _shit_ —he really needs to speak to her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He feels some relief just sitting down in the chair opposite Rose, though she must be able to see how all over the place he is.

“How are you, James?”

“Lewis is going to Paris.” 

She sits up a little straighter. “Tell me.”

"Lewis is going to Paris for New Year."

“OK.”

“No, you don’t understand. He’s asked me to go with him. He wants me to go with him to Paris.”

She beams at him and he grumbles. “You’re meant to remain neutral, you know.”

“Nonsense. I’m meant to care about you having the happiest, most fulfilling life you can.”

“And you think that involves going to Paris with Lewis?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Don’t you?”

He hesitates. “I don’t know why he’s asked me.”

She frowns and he finds he has to reassure her. “No, I don’t mean—I can accept that he might want to spend time with me.”

She looks at him with what appears to be pride, and he treats her to his best _stop making a fuss_ look—a look he might have learned from Lewis. A look that if Lewis was sporting it would be accompanied by an exasperated _give over_. 

“Am I to understand that you’re uncertain of Lewis’ intentions?”

“Yes. Though in my head, I’m rather less of an Austin heroine than that suggests.”

She laughs then clearly makes some effort to look more serious. “Did you ask him why he’s asked you to go?”

“No, of course not!” Sometimes she has the most outrageous ideas.

She smiles. “OK, well, talk me through the possibilities, as you see them.”

“He said he’s never been to Paris and he fancies going on Eurostar. That he’s been thinking about it for a while. Maybe he wants me to help plan an itinerary; do the reading up on the sights and museums.”

“So, essentially he wants you there as an unpaid tour guide?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I suppose it is. Give me another possibility.”

James inspects his nails. “He wants me to go because he likes my company. Sees me as a friend.”

“So, he values you for more than your ability to plan a day’s sight-seeing?”

He can feel himself heating up. It had never occurred to him that learning to feel emotions more fully would involve feeling so much bloody heat. He seems to spend half his waking hours blushing at the moment, which is not a look that shouts hard-bitten copper. “Yes. It’s a possibility.” He glances at her and she nods in agreement.

“Yes, it is a possibility.”

Neither of them says anything for a minute or two, but eventually Rose moves them into far more heat-inducing territory. “And another possibility, James?”

He looks over to the vases and bowls on the window ledge. This late in the year, there’s no sunlight filtering through the green and blue glass. They look like shadowy pools of pond water or sea water—deep and dark, with their secrets hidden below the surface. He sighs. “It is possible, theoretically, that he—” He falters. “That he’s interested in . . . something more.”

“Could you expand on the _something more_ , James?”

“The stuff of poetry and novels . . . _a glimpse through an interstice caught; the pearl to be found in the dark folds of life._ ”

“Do you mean the possibility that he might have romantic feelings for you? Sexual feelings? That he might love you?”

At _love_ , his heart lurches. “Love’s a very strong word.”

“It is. You don’t think Lewis is capable of feeling strongly? Of loving?”

 _God_. “No, I do; I’m sure he is capable, that he did—his wife.”

“But?”

“But—it’s really not likely he feels that way about me, is it? I mean, I do get that Lewis could love someone. And yes, OK, I accept that someone, at some point, could love me. But for Lewis to . . . there’s nothing beyond wishful thinking to base that idea on—absolutely no evidence. I mean, apart from anything else, he’s never shown any interest in men, that I’m aware of. There’s just no evidence.”

She looks like she’s weighing up what he’s said. “I do see what you’re saying. Except—he has invited you to spend New Year with him in Paris, the romance capital of the world. I mean, it isn’t exactly a day trip to Croydon, is it?”

He can’t help laughing . . . and he can’t help the tendrils of hope, of longing, that softly twine around his poor, defenceless heart.

Rose looks at him, kindly. “Well, I can think of two ways you might find out.”

 _Two?_ “Going to Paris, I suppose, is one?”

“Indeed. And the other?”

He truly doesn’t have a clue.

“ _Ask_ him, James! Talk to him!”

“Really, no! We don’t—talking isn’t—”

She shakes her head in fond exasperation, and who does that remind him of? He gives her an _I know we’re useless_ look of acknowledgement, and she smiles. “If you want to find out, sounds like you’re going to have to go to Paris with him then, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, God.”

They both start giggling and it’s joyous. To have someone to do this with; to laugh and speculate— _Is it a date? Isn’t it a date? Do you think Lewis really likes me?_ How is he going to get through the next few weeks, all the build-up to the trip, without her. But ending therapy today has been planned for the last six weeks, and at his suggestion. She’d felt it was a little premature, but had accepted his wish. He can hardly mess her about now.

“James? You look like you’ve just sobered up.”

Should he tell her? She’s said again and again throughout their work together that he’s allowed to want things, to need things, even when it’s inconvenient; even if he won’t always get what he needs. 

“I was just thinking—it’s unfortunate timing, this being my last session.”

“She looks intently at him. “In an ideal world, what would you have?”

It feels so difficult saying it, asking for what he wants. He doesn’t want to put her in the position of having to say no to him; he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of having to hear no from her. He sighs. “I’d carry on seeing you until after Paris.”

She smiles and nods. “Why don’t we do that, then?”

It can’t be as easy as that. “I thought endings were sacrosanct in psychotherapy?”

“Well, holding the boundary of the ending is often a good idea, but the needs of the individual client should always underpin these kinds of decisions. For some clients, a predictable, planned ending is what’s most therapeutic. For you, getting to say what you need and then receiving it—my feeling is that that would be a very good use of our time. What do you think?”

“I think— _thank God for that_. I've got a feeling the next few weeks are going to be something of a challenge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Therapy session from James POV but not focussing on James' childhood or anything particularly emotionally challenging or upsetting.
> 
>  
> 
> James uses two quotes when trying to articulate the possibility that Lewis might have some romantic feelings towards him:
> 
> "A glimpse through an interstice caught," from A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
> 
> "The pearl to be found in the dark folds of life” from this quote from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo:
> 
> “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”


	13. Early January: Session 27: Final Session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery content outline in notes at end of chapter, for readers who need to make decisions about avoiding certain kinds of content.

When she’d first qualified as a psychotherapist, she’d rather disapproved of herself at times when she’d got excited or impatient about seeing a particular client. She’d seen it as a lapse in therapeutic equanimity, and in some ways she’d found it more difficult to accept than the times when she’d dreaded seeing a client. But now, after many years of experience, after taking these moments to her supervisor again and again, and of course, with the self-knowledge that has come from many years of her own psychotherapy, she understands that this excitement is important. It shows that she’s in the therapeutic relationship as a human being, not just as some provider of rote-learned reassurances and observations, like some robo-therapist. It shows that she cares about her clients; that what happens to them matters to her. And it shows, as is the case with all kinds of human encounters, that some touch her more than others. 

Of course, it’s important for her to keep exploring in supervision why _this_ person, why not _that_ person. And of course, she doesn’t always share her excitement with the individual clients concerned, or at least not the extent of it. The therapy is for the client, not her, and she wouldn’t want her emotional reactions getting in the way of them doing the work they need to do. But there are occasional clients who she so wants life to treat well, who she so wants to see happy, that when things do start going their way, it’s hard work keeping her excitement at a professionally acceptable level.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She hasn’t seen James Hathaway for three weeks, what with Christmas and New Year— _and his five days in Paris with Lewis_. Settling himself in the armchair opposite her at the start of the session, he looks well; nothing like the pale, tired, one bad case away from disintegrating, DS Hathaway who’d turned up unannounced at her office, late one afternoon in early spring. He is, being James, giving nothing away, his face a relaxed-seeming blank.

“How are you, James?”

“I’m good, thanks. And you?”

“Yes, I’m well. I had a few days away with my partner, visiting friends.”

They sit quietly for a while; him, apparently in no hurry to get the session going; her, having to exercise considerable restraint so as not to just blurt out, _Well? For Heaven’s sake, tell me what happened?!_ Eventually, he crosses his legs and smooths none-existent wrinkles from his trouser leg. “Paris was good.”

“Tell me.” This comes out a little more like a command than might be considered strictly therapeutic. 

“The weather was very cold, but dry and sunny; lovely for walking round the city.” And then, God help her, he spends a very long ten minutes outlining the many museums and churches they’d visited, while she tries valiantly to fully pay attention. 

Then the git lapses into silence again, and she knows he’s messing with her. She nods, thoughtfully. “So, if I’ve understood, your time in Paris was a happy one purely because of the quantity of Impressionist art and ecclesiastical architecture you viewed?”

“Well, perhaps not just for those reasons.” He smiles and his gaze shifts to the vases and bowls on the window ledge. She watches him pull in a deep breath; when he looks at her again, his expression is soft and full of wonderment.

“He loves me.”

 _Halle-fucking-luiah._  

He presses his lips together in an attempt to control his smile. It doesn’t work. “He told me he loves me.” 

She smiles back. “What else did he say?”

His cheeks are blazing now. “He said that over a year ago he’d realised his life would be miserable and incomplete without me. That it had taken him a long time to accept that he might feel that way about someone other than his wife. That he was sorry he’d been such a tetchy bastard while he was trying to work it all out. That he’d found men attractive in the past but had never done anything about it. That finding out that I was in therapy, which he seems to consider requires more bravery than facing down knife-wielding maniacs, that that had spurred him on to start thinking of a way of investigating if I might have any interest in him—that if I could be brave, so could he.”

They smile and smile at each other. He looks utterly transformed.

“Oh, and he also said to say hello to you tonight—he knows this is my last session. He said—” James falters— “He said to thank you for taking care of me when he couldn’t; when he didn’t know how to make things better for me.”

Emotion wells up in her. She’s still smiling at him, but her eyes are watering. “Thank you for passing on the message.”

He meets her gaze and nods but then looks away, clearly thinking something through. “I’ve got an odd question for you. It’s something that occurred to me while we were in Paris. Did you somehow know he felt like that about me, that he loved me? I mean, before I had a clue?”

“No; not _know_. But I did have a strong sense that he cared deeply about you.”

“When did you first think that?”

She’s not sure how he’s going to take her answer. “The first time I met you. When the two of you came to see me about Anthony Macaulay.”

His eyes widen. “How?!”

She shrugs. “Something about the way he looked at me when I was kind to you. I’m not sure I can articulate it beyond that.”

“Can I ask why you didn’t say anything to me, at some point in our work?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe me; I didn’t think you’d be able to make use of the information. And I trusted that you’d eventually discover his care for you, yourself, and I thought that would be far more helpful.” She gives him the opportunity to disagree. “Did I get that wrong, James? Looking back, do you wish I’d told you earlier?”

He thinks it through but eventually shakes his head. “I imagine I would have thought you’d completely taken leave of your senses.”

They talk about the trip to Paris again; about James’ nervousness on the journey there, made worse by Lewis’ apparent matching nerves. They talk again about the visits to museums and beautiful parts of Paris, but this time less in terms of tourist sights seen, and more in terms of the brushing of one shoulder against another during a stroll by the Canal Saint-Martin on their first day there. They talk about the second day, about a warm hand softly coming to rest in the small of James’ back as he and Lewis had bathed in the astonishing, curative purples and mauves and greens of Monet’s water lily ponds.

Then he tells her about the evening—the third evening in Paris—when they had sat outside an old brasserie despite the winter chill and had shared a bottle of wine; the night when they’d eaten sole bonne femme and had watched passers-by laugh and squabble and kiss. The night when, finally, Lewis had made a simple speech about love and loss and the time that healing takes, and then without fuss or drama had held out his hand, and with that simple gesture had offered his heart to James.

Like most psychotherapists, Rose does the job she does for a number of simple and not so simple reasons. She’s always has a strong drive to try to relieve other people’s suffering, which is not surprising given that she was raised by a mother from a poor background who’d had a lifelong belief in the benefits of socialism and the cooperative movement, and by a father who came from a long line of progressive Quakers. Also in Rose’s life—as is the case with many psychotherapists—there has been terrible loss—a brother dead in his twenties, and parents never again fully able to set down the crushing weight of their grief. And so, like many psychotherapists, she initially entered the profession driven by an unexamined yearning to heal herself, to heal her parents; to raise the dead. As Perls said, only one kind of person becomes a psychotherapist—a person with issues; but two kinds remain in the profession—those who address their issues and those who do not. Rose certainly entered the profession with her share of struggles and sorrow, but she’s had decades of training and therapy and supervision, and she knows it would be difficult for anyone at this point to suggest she hasn’t addressed her issues.

So, these days, she isn’t driven in her work by old needs to heal old wounds; that hasn’t been the case for a very long time. Instead, what motivates her to do this difficult work is the wish to see people step out from under the shadow of their trauma and losses, and not merely to survive, but to grow, to flourish, to build a life for themselves that is meaningful and satisfying; _and_ , if at all possible, for those people to be happy. She keeps doing this work because there are people like James Hathaway. Because there are people who are living lives of quiet—or not so quiet—desperation. Because there are people who find a way, through extraordinary courage and sheer bloody-mindedness, to seek help. Because there are people who stick with the awful grind of therapy and who work at it and work at it, until finally, they can get on a train to Paris with the man they love, not knowing if their love will prove to be a mutual thing. Because there are people who dare to take a risk, even when their history is yelling at them to _Play it safe! Stay at home!_

She glances at the clock. “How do you feel about this being our last session, James?”

“I’ve got mixed feelings, really. I haven’t found the sessions easy at all, as I’m sure you’re aware; if I’m honest, a big part of me is relieved it’s over. But, I’m also, well, I’m sad too. I’m finding it difficult to accept that next week will come round and I won’t be sitting here, opposite you . . . not talking.”

“Gazing at the glassware.”

He smiles. “Gazing at the glassware. _God_ , I’m going to miss the glassware. I’m thinking of starting my own collection.”

She laughs and asks what his plans are for the rest of the evening. He says he’s going to stay with Lewis, who is cooking him lasagne, apparently. 

“He thought I might need some comfort food. He’s suggested I stay over—it’ll be the first time. Well, I’ve crashed on his sofa a few times, but I don’t think that’s what he’s got in mind.” James looks like he couldn’t stop smiling—or blushing—if he wanted to. 

She really is going to start crying if she’s not careful. “I’m so happy for you. You’ve worked so hard, so courageously to get to this point.”

“Thank you.” He looks away, a bit embarrassed, but after a few moments, he meets her gaze again. “Really, thank you—you know I would never have been able to do any of this without you. I’d tried to whip myself into shape for years and had just dug myself deeper and deeper into a hole.”

“You’re completely welcome, James. It’s been a joy, a privilege, to work with you. You’ve made such good use of the sessions.”

He gives her a self-deprecating smile. “Maybe, but I still don’t have any idea how to do this ending.”

“That’s OK.” She smiles, her heart full of tenderness for him. “Our hour is up, so I think it’s time for you to go to Lewis’ and be fed lasagne and stay the night in his bed. Don’t you?”

He smiles at her and smiles at her. “Yes—it’s time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Therapy session from James POV but not focussing on James' childhood or anything particularly emotionally challenging or upsetting.
> 
> In part, this story was inspired by Coleman Barks' translation of the Rumi poem, This being human is a guest house:
> 
> This being human is a guest house  
> Every morning a new arrival.  
> A joy, a depression, a meanness,  
> some momentary awareness comes  
> as an unexpected visitor.  
> Welcome and entertain them all!  
> Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,  
> who violently sweep your house  
> empty of its furniture,  
> still treat each guest honorably.  
> He may be clearing you out for some new delight.  
> The dark thought, the shame, the malice,  
> meet them at the door laughing,  
> and invite them in.  
> Be grateful for whoever comes,  
> because each has been sent  
> as a guide from beyond.
> 
> Rose, in her thoughts at one point, references Thoreau's "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."


End file.
